Study finds behavioral link between insomnia and tension-type headaches.

A study in the Feb. 15 issue of the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine shows that the use of sleep or napping to relieve chronic pain caused by tension-type headaches could have the unwanted effect of decreasing the homeostatic drive for sleep, leading to reduced ability to initiate and maintain sleep at night. Use of sleep as a coping mechanism for pain over time could lead to the development of poor sleep hygiene and serve as a perpetuating factor for chronic insomnia (see also American Academy of Sleep Medicine).

Group comparisons on triggers of headache indicate that a significantly greater proportion of the headache group relative to the control group (58 versus 18 percent) reported sleep problems as a trigger of headaches, and women in the headache group reported a significantly higher rating of pain interfering with sleep. Eighty-one percent of women who suffer from tension-type headaches reported going to sleep as a way of managing their headaches; this method was also rated as the most effective self-management strategy for pain.

Principal investigator and lead author, Jason C. Ong, PhD, assistant professor of behavioral sciences at Rush University Medical Center, said the extent to which headache sufferers rated sleep as being an effective method for coping with pain was somewhat surprising

"Insomnia is a common complaint among headache sufferers. While napping may relieve pain, it may also result in poor sleep hygiene, thus triggering sleep disturbance or perpetuating an insomnia episode," said Ong.

A high proportion of both the headache and control groups (97 and 70 percent) reported stress as a trigger of headaches. No significant differences were found between the groups on use of medication to relieve headaches.

A total of 65 women were recruited from undergraduate psychology courses at a university located in the southeastern U.S.; 32 participants who were confirmed to have tension-type headaches, as ...